Terminator 2 Meets Demoiselles d'Avignon
Silver Glitter, Skin-Tight Vinyl, and Almost-Nude Women at the Watermill Center's Summer Fundraiser
It was a big weekend for art and commerce in the Hamptons. At the annual charity event Super Saturday, the promise of designer-brand discounts and a daytime photo op brought out everyone from Rudy Giuliani to Emma Roberts. It wasn't until later, though, that the real festivities began, at this year's Watermill Center's summer benefit, somewhat opaquely entitled Voluptuous Panic. (Full disclosure: This reporter served on the junior committee.)
Combining swish and eccentricity like no other event on the East End's social calendar, the fundraiser (which took in $1.5 million this year) gives the picturesque compound's international cadre of artists-in-residence an opportunity to show their stuff. The centerpiece this time was a musical steamroller. Conceived by artist Peter Coffin, it did slow laps around a group of almost-nude women who'd been dipped head-to-toe in oil and silver glitter: Terminator 2 meets Demoiselles d'Avignon.
A walking tour through the woods revealed a range of installations and performance art pieces, the most talked-about of which consisted of two young men buried up to their chins and droning into microphones. "I'm afraid they're going to get Lyme disease," fretted Katie Lee. "This is tick country!" As a full-time Sagaponack resident, she would know. "I almost stepped on one of the [buried men] with my McQueen heel," Monique Péan reported. "And just as I did that, Bill Cunningham took a picture."
Cindy Sherman, Alan Cumming, and Pink Floyd's Roger Waters were among those making the rounds, as was Rufus Wainwright, in a Vivienne Westwood jacket he had just picked up in London during a five-night stint at the Royal Opera House. Later, Wainwright sang a birthday song he'd composed for the center's founder, Robert Wilson. Then Simon de Pury went back to auctioning off works by the likes of Julian Schnabel and Andy Warhol, and during the after-party, younger members of Hamptons society rediscovered the wooden swings that had earlier been part of a performance of seemingly pregnant women clad in skin-tight vinyl. Talk about a multi-use space.
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